Between 2011 and 2016, Greater Brisbane saw a 2% mode shift towards private motorised transport for journeys to work, the largest such shift of all large Australian cities. Was it to do with where jobs growth happened, or because public transport became less attractive over that time?

This post takes a more detailed look at the spatial changes in private transport mode shares, and then examines the relative impact on spatial variations in jobs growth compared to other factors.

Brisbane residents are getting off public transport and back into cars, with 72 per cent of people going to work by car.

Compared to other Australian capital cities, Brisbane was one of only two that had a decline in public transport usage to get to work between 2011 and 2016, with Perth being the other.

Brisbane City Council’s infrastructure committee reviewed Brisbane’s commuting habits and compared them with other capital cities following the recent release of the 2016 Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data.

A council spokesman said the downward trend with public transport usage could be due to service interruptions on rail lines or fare escalation between 2011 and 2016.

“Sydney benefited from quite a fair bit of surgery to their rail network and also a lot of urban consolidation, and to a lesser extent Melbourne,” he said.

According to ABS, in Brisbane, 20.2 per cent of people travelled to work by public transport in 2011 compared to 18.6 per cent in 2016.

Public transport was mainly used along the Northgate, Ferny Grove and Oxley rail corridors as well as the south-east region, Waterworks Road and Chermside bus corridors.

In 2016, 72.2 per cent of Brisbane residents used a car to get to work compared with 70.3 per cent in 2011.

Compared with other capital cities, Brisbane was the second-least reliant on cars, with more car travel than Sydney but less than Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.

Both Melbourne and Sydney had a decline in car transport between the last two census data collections while Brisbane had an increase.

Brisbane is still a car-dominated city for journeys to work, except for the inner city.

For cycling, the data showed more Brisbane residents jumped on a bike to get to work than any other capital city with 2.1 per cent of residents travelling by bike in 2016 compared to 1.9 per cent in 2011.

Sydney had an increase in bicycle use between 2011 and 2016, but still, less than 1 per cent of Sydney residents travel to work by bike.

Melbourne also had an increase in cycling but is yet to reach the same percentage of commuters travelling by bike that Brisbane has.

The council spokesman said there were certainly significant differences in travel behaviour trends between the capital cities.

“As we expected, Brisbane local government area really does perform pretty well compared to other capital cities,” he said.

“Brisbane is generally between the top two cities, Sydney and Melbourne, and performing better than Adelaide and Perth.”